Houston's freezing time, done (almost) entirely in rhyme

Icicles hang off of the Winter Street sign near downtown Houston on Tuesday.

Icicles hang off of the Winter Street sign near downtown Houston on...

Something I've always wanted to do is write an entire column in rhyming verse. Doggerel, that is, not poetry. I couldn't write anything that a poet would call poetry.

So in January when I was out of the paper, I entertained myself by trying to put together a rhyme column. But I discovered that getting the rhythm right, and the rhyming, was not easy and took a lot of time. I never got it finished.

First, I invite you to go along with my story, that Texas is about to get a great blow of winter weather - on top of what we've already received. My message is that we should all welcome cold weather because this state seldom gets all the winter it needs. Houston doesn't anyway. Here's the opening:

After that start, I got bogged down with rhyme trouble and had to toss out several lines that I needed. Writing a couplet - two rhyming lines - seems so simple, and sometimes it is. Other times it becomes blamed near impossible to find the rhyme you need.

There's help available. On the Internet, I found a site called Wordhippo. Say you want a word that rhymes with goat. If you type goat in the right place, Wordhippo will give you boat, moat, coat, throat, wrote and dozens of others. However, even if you find the word with the right rhyme, it may not have the meaning you need.

Moving along, somewhere near the middle of the rhyme column I have a storm warning:

Translator

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Then somewhere in there I have a weather warning for country people. I like this part pretty well:

Let the cat in, call the dogs,

Gather horses, cows and hogs.

Shut your sheep safe in their pens,

Save your roosters, chicks and hens.

Break the ice on troughs and tanks.

Thirsty birds will chirp their thanks.

(Hire a handy person who'll

Feed a certain talking mule.)

And it occurred to me that freezing weather would be hard on the old folks, so we have:

Cut some firewood, where's the ax?

Give the log a dozen whacks.

Toss the sticks into the fire,

Make it bigger, hotter, higher.

Listen to those coughs and sneezes,

Symptoms of the worst diseases.

Shut the windows, seal the door,

We won't need those anymore.

Fetch a quilt for Paw and Granny.

Plug up every nook and cranny.

Where's the aspirin, hurry, faster,

Someone rig a mustard plaster.

Along in here, I attempted several lines about blizzard activity in Houston, but I had constant trouble finding rhymes and, finally, I just quit looking.

For instance, I wanted a rhyme for the word sculpture. Couldn't think of one, so I went to Wordhippo and it tried to tell me that color and ulcer rhyme with sculpture. Not where I come from they don't. Some people have strange notions about what makes a rhyme.

I know, a few lines above I've tried to pass off who'll as a rhyme with mule and I admit that may be a stretch, but at least those two words are in the same ZIP code. Color and sculpture? Where's the rhyme in that pair? But here's what I left in the column about our city:

Snow in Houston? Let it fall.

Build a snowman 10 feet tall.

Skate the ice on Buffalo Bayou.

Fun for you and me oh my oh.

Hockey games in Hermann Park,

Snowball fights from dawn to dark.

Dogsled race on Loop 610,

(Case of flea meds if you win.)

Children ride with foot-long icicles

On the handles of their bicycles.

I wanted a little something in the story about grub, so I threw this in toward the end:

All this action calls for chow,

Not tomorrow but right now.

Let us make a pot of chili

Good enough for Merle and Willie.

Use the kitchen of mi casa,

You bring beef and I'll add masa.

Pour red pepper in the pot,

We want chili smokin' hot.

The deadline is nippin' at me so I've got to go. I had to throw out the best lines because they refused to rhyme. But here's a couplet to end on: